Power&Surrender
by MidenianScholar
Summary: She thinks of everything and nothing. She remembers their dreams, all dead now, and she wants to forget. Susan reflects on her siblings' death. A more poetic look on her thoughts.


_A/N: I know many people have done their interpretation of what happened to Susan after the train crash, but I have wanted to write my version ever since my dad first read through the Chronicles of Narnia (I was probably no more than 8 at the time). I have tried to take a more poetic view of it that some of the other version. Tell me if I succeeded. My dad has encouraged me to keep writing for Susan, to see how her friends react to her loss. If you think it's a good idea, drop a comment. Enjoy and review!_

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**Power&Surrender**

_Look up at the rain  
A beautiful display  
Of power and surrender…  
__-Daisy, Switchfoot_

The rain drips—_plop, plop—_into the bucket.

She sits and stares at the windows before her. Rain chases rain down the glass in creeping beads and darting streams. When she was a child she would watch the drops slide down and rejoice when they made it to the bottom, to their goal.

When she was a child.

The bucket is on the small table beside her. The roof had begun to leak weeks ago, and Papa always said he would fix it tomorrow.

_Tomorrow will never come now_, she thinks. _Not for him_.

She remembers Lucy, still very much a child even as she grew into a beautiful young woman. She remembers a conversation they had not long ago. _"Do you want to get married, Susan?" "Of course! Don't you?" "Maybe someday. What do you want your husband to be like?" "Oh, he must have gorgeous, big brown eyes and dashing brown hair. And he must call me his love and make me scones on Saturdays. What do you want your husband to be like, Lu?" "Well… I'd like him to look like Papa, only younger. Then he'd always remind me of home." Susan had laughed. "If you wish him to be like that, I hope he is. He'll doubtlessly be on his way before long, with the way you're growing up."_

Now he is too late.

Everything is too late.

"Narnia!" they'd said. "There's trouble. What should we do?" 

"_Narnia?" she'd laughed. "You still think about our old games?"_

She thinks that perhaps if she had stopped them, they would not have been on the train—if she had convinced them to stop pretending, if she had found something to keep them away from the station. Or if she had gone with them she would not be alone with the weeping rain.

_Plop, plop._

She thinks of everything and nothing. She remembers their dreams, all dead now, and she wants to forget.

How can she loose all she ever truly loved in one day?

In the stories, they never loose everything. There is always _someone_ left, someone to comfort, someone to heal, someone to cry with.

But she is lost, with no one.

Father, mother, brothers, sister, cousin, friends… Everyone gone.

She thinks of her task ahead: contacting the family, starting to arrange the funerals. She knows she has to be brave.

But she doesn't want to be.

What will happen to her?

The house makes its house-noises. Her elder brother's room creaks, and she lifts her face to the noise. Just yesterday he was throwing himself on his bed with a book, just yesterday he was stomping around his room making preparations for the trip.

Now his room is empty, full of his things—things she would have to look through and sort and take care of.

Suddenly she knows she cannot stay here; here where ghosts haunt her thoughts and memories, where creaks tell her how empty her home is.

She grips the piece of paper, throwing on her coat and rushing into the drizzling rain unheeding. Too late she realizes she forgot an umbrella, but she cannot turn back. She walks quickly, feeling the puddles splash around her ankles and the rain trail down her face. Motorcars drive past her; people brush her shoulders.

And she feels nothing.

A time later she finds herself staring at the pond in the park about a mile from her home. Large raindrops plop into the water, and the sound is almost soothing. She sees the geese that guard the water, huddling together in their family and watching her warily. She remembers when one of them bit her little sister and her little brother kicked it. He always had hated them after that, and refused to give them any breadcrumbs.

She pushes her soaked hair from her face and turns her eyes to the water. She does not want to think, she does not want to remember.

But she does.

"You aren't grown up, Susan!" Peter had yelled at her, months ago, in one of their more recent, heated arguments. "And saying you are isn't helping."

_She had just been caught sneaking out with some friends while her parents were away. "You aren't my babysitter, Peter! And you're hardly older than me!"_

_They had yelled for a good ten minutes. Finally Peter shouted, "What will it take to make you wake up and see you aren't the only one in this family? You won't be an adult until then—at least!" Then he had stormed away._

She tilts her head up, letting the rain wash her face and squinting at the clouds.

I know now, Peter. I know… 

She opens her mouth to sob, and she tastes salt in the rain.

Warm arms suddenly embrace her, and she smells the herbs that accompany her aunt. The familiar voice whispers to her, lightly scolding her for being out in such weather, and telling her it will be all right.

She hides her face against her aunt's scratchy jacket and cries freely.

Maybe she still has one person left.


End file.
